SCHOLAR ARTIST

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Works in Ink

In an on-going sketchbook, with drawings produced by observation while traveling as well as with models in the studio, I examine similar conceptual themes (transparency, layering, and the frame) as well as aesthetic elements (suggestion, overlapping, and variable quality of mark and line) as those that I probe in my visual essays through a haptic synthesis of hand, ink and paper.

4 thoughts on “Works in Ink”

Michelangelo’s drawings of the crucifixion are said to embody both pathos and ecstasy simultaneously. To achieve this, Christ’s body–which has succumbed to gravities of flesh–has three points which function as his front right iliac crest. The subject is exalted through the manipulation of structural anatomy and convention, and that is what I am so exited to see Devon begin to control in such an unforgivable medium as ink.

Look at how effortless and resolved Devon’s study on Sept 27th is! And in that on October 27th, observe how the ring on the joined hands is a continuation of the median line of the shinbone, creating the stable fulcrum for the movement of the head, and a parallel corridor between the implication of that structure and the leg that falls down off the picture plane. All of this leads me to the singularity within the image: the head. The dismissal of my expectation is disconcerting and clearly becomes the strong subject of the work.

As a professor of painting, drawing and Renaissance art, I would like to pose Devon the question as to how, through an abundance of information, one might effect a similar ecstatic state in the viewer.

Viewing Devon’s works in ink, I wondered about the contrast between the bodies and the faces of the figures. I see in the bodies such a full, real person–they are shaded and have depth. And then there are the faces–stark, unfinished and almost ‘otherworldly’, like the exposed beams of an architectural structure.

I find Devon’s ink drawings fascinating. They are beautiful images that still leave much to the imagination. His incomplete or blank faces lead me to question who these people are and where their minds wandered off to while Devon drew them. These drawings leave me wanting to know more.

Devon Schiller’s works are truly remarkable and completely original. I have had the honor of watching him work on several occasions and always find myself absorbed in his process of applying loose ink to paper and creating recognizable, beautiful shapes. He has a unique way of seeing the world and a warm nature which comes across in his final works.